Renewables are unreliable. That’s a fact. Yes you have moments, days even weeks where they can deliver what is currently required. In total output. Not yet in delivers when you actually need it output.
Sure you can have 100% renewable generation for a 24hr period, but if your generation is during the day and your usage is spread into the night, you’re not really covering your needs, no matter how good it looks on paper.
It is also your current usage. Now do the math and replace all fossil fuel usage with electric alternatives. Cars, buses, trucks, heating, cooking, etc. Now calculate just how much more renewables you need to cover all that in ideal circumstances.
Now do the same for windless winter days.
If we’re going to step away from fossil fuels entirely, you’re going to have to accept nuclear as an option. Thinking we’ll manage only with renewables is a dream. While you dream, we’re burning fossil fuels non-stop. Cuz that’s reality.
You can have renewables with nuclear, or renewables with fossil fuels. You’re actively choosing renewables with fossil fuels.
by insulating the roof of my house better i cut my useage of oil by more than 50%, next time i’ll insulate the outer walls, and after that i’ll switch to electric heating that would need just 20% of the original energy.
you forget that the energy consumption not neccesarily always rises. All appliances get better and better in efficiency, for example.
Yes, your total energy consumption drops, but your electricity consumption rises as a result. Electrification of stuff that relied on burning fossil fuels means that electricity consumption goes up even while total energy consumption stays the same or drops. I’m not necessarily saying that nuclear is the solution, but it’s a solution that can at least buy us a few decades for renewables and energy storage to catch up to demand.
An EV will double your electricity usage. Look into the requirements for EV cargo transport. Swapping out all the diesel trucks, just the heavy transport will come close to doubling the national electricity needs. Add to that small vans and buses.
I urge you to actually do the math. You’ll get a much much better understanding of the issue. Just pasting links to articles that look like they support your arguments adds to the dream.
The aim is to drop fossil fuels. Your goal should’ve been to embrace nuclear while increasing renewables. Atm you seem fine with just burning fossil fuels, killing the planet, cuz the alternative isn’t renewable. GG.
Take a look at Germany, Belgium, etc. ditching nuclear because the green parties fought so hard for it. What are they doing now? Back to healthy healthy coal and gas. Thanks for helping kill the planet even faster in your zeal for exclusively renewable energy.
What most people dont’ understand, i live in a part of germany, where eating of self collected mushrooms will radiate you, where boars in the forest are radioactive because of chernobyl 30 years ago…
There may be a point when we don’t need nuclear, maybe once we dramatically level up our battery technology, but that point is not now, and probably not for the next 50 years
it is still the same, but we’re already conditioned to have everything thrown at us on every single internet interaction, making the thought of searching something new seem like stepping out of our comfort zone
with AIs and what not, this feeling will only worsen
My issue with nuclear energy isn’t that it’s dangerous or that it’s inherently bad. The world needs a stable source of energy that compensates for wind and solar fluctuations anyways. For the current realistic alternatives that’s either going to be nuclear or coal/oil/natural gas. We have nothing else for this purpose, end of discussion.
My problem is the assumption underlying this discussion about nuclear energy that it somehow will solve all of our problems or that it will somehow allow us to continue doing business as usual. That’s categorically not the case. The climate crisis has multiple fronts that need to be dealt with and the emissions is just one of them. Even if we somehow managed to find the funds and resources to replace all non renewable energy with nuclear, we would still have solved just 10% of the problem, and considering that this cheap new energy will allow us to increase our activities and interventions in the planet, the situation will only worsen.
Nuclear energy is of course useful, but it’s not the answer. Never has technology been the answer for a social and political issue. We can’t “science and invent” our way out of this, it’s not about the tech, it’s about who decides how it will be used, who will profit from it, who and how much will be affected by it etc. If you want to advocate for a way to deal with the climate crisis you have to propose a complete social and political plan that will obviously include available technologies, so stop focusing on technologies and start focusing on society and who takes the decisions.
One simple example would be the following: no matter how green your energy is, if the trend in the US is to have increasingly bigger cars and no public transport, then the energy demands will always increase and no matter how many nuclear plants you build, they will only serve as an additional source and not as a replacement. So no matter how many plants you build, the climate will only deteriorate.
This is literally how the people in charge have decided it will work. Any new developing energy source that is invented serves only to increase the consumption, not to replace previous technologies. That’s the case with solar and wind as well. So all of this discussion you all make about nuclear Vs oil or whatever is literally irrelevant. The problem is social and political, not technological.
Time to grab your board (web navigator) and surf (follow hyperlinks) the web (more commonly, the graphical “internet”). Totally rippin the gnar, my gender indeterminate dudes (check out wikipedia). Yeaaaahhh (yes, emphatically)!!!
It’s interesting watching the discussion in this thread evolving and polarizing. Yesterday the discussion started as ‘nuclear is one solution in a portfolio of solutions to combat climate change. vs. nuclear is always bad.’ and developed into ‘nuclear is good and you’re dumb. vs. nuclear is bad and you’re evil’.
Seems like that’s how every large scale “discussion” on the internet goes, all nuance goes out the window. I guess the platforms don’t allow for nuanced takes? Other than maybe longform podcasts, but those aren’t exactly large scale discussions like reddit or twitter. Maybe some clever sociologist can figure out why we are like this (or likely already has).
It’s also really weird because discussing a topic like this heavily impacted by where you come from. For exemple the discussion about nuclear energy cannot be the same in France, China, USA or Russia and I see almost everyone here talking the thing like the choice between Nuclear Energy or not (because it’s should never be about Nuclear Energy or Renewable Energy) was the same everywhere on the planet.
So here we are, a lot of people talking to themselves instead of talking with each other, hammering their idea on the topic without even once considering that others living in others places and living in others conditions will approach the subject differently (and than it should be normal and comprehensible)
Where the fuck we gonna put all the waste product? I’m not saying nuclear power is bad, far from it, but we have two problems here:
Its cost prohibitive to build new Third Generation reactors that are fault tolerant, and moreso to assure that all the Second Generation reactors are fully fault tolerant given how adjacent they are to flood plains and fault lines in the US
Where the fuck are we gonna put the waste at? Yucca Mountain is off the table for good, WIPP is nearing capacity for a pilot plant, and we have nothing like Onkalo planned out despite the funding being there many times over
All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site. Waste certainly isn’t the main issue, though it’s portrayed to be. Cost of deployment and staffing are more prohibitive issues, and both are surmountable. I don’t think it’s a bandaid for all power issues, but it’s a powerful tool that should be used more often, not phased out.
Also we do have the ability to re-utilize waste in different types of reactors until it is essentially entirely spent. There is a complete cycle available. Nobody talks about it though because you know, not as cost-effective
All the waste a plant ever produces in its lifetime can be contained with ease on site.
Won’t that create a bunch of targets all over the country? Then terrorists or enemy states can use simple small bombs to make whole areas uninhabitable for the next millennium.
Strong enough to be hit by a train full speed too IIRC, plus if we actually built Yucca Mtn anyone getting within 500 miles of Fallon is getting vaporized over the sand long before they can try busting any bunkers
Or much much longer. It’s not going anywhere. It can’t escape its cask, and outside human intervention the casks won’t be breached. It’s just locked-up metal that gives off some radiation, fully contained within the cask. It isn’t oozing green goo.
@spicytuna62 It's not the best we got. The best we got is to stop the wasteful overproduction and stop letting society being about building building building.
We should rather reframe society into being about growing and localizing the economy. Focusing on living with nature, not at it's expense.
I don’t disagree with you, but this is unrealistic. Starting the whole principles of society from scratch is never gonna happen. We should focus on making sure that, while we still “build and build”, it is in a sustainable way, using renewable energy sources, as well as nuclear.
Edit: this is not saying we don’t need societal change, there are definitely lots of things that need fixing, but it’s never gonna be done all at once, completely different. What needs to happen is we focus on the core of the problems, fix that now, and then it will end up looking completeley different than what we have today.
I don’t disagree with you, but this is unrealistic.
But…we don’t have a choice if we are to survive. Continuation with any system like our current system (i.e. exploitation of nature for economic growth) will lead to obvious ecological collapse. Why is certain ecological collapse viewed as the more realistic choice?
This is akin to a person well on their way to a heart attack saying “well, eating healthy is unrealistic, so let’s switch to diet coke and pretend that’s enough”
Yes, except we shouldn’t “pitch” it as a total change if we want it to happen. Unfortunately the general public has been brainwashed into believing we are basically either terrorists or we belong in an asylum. It’s insane but it’s the world we live in…
I’m sure nuclear can be super safe and efficient. The science is legit.
The problem is, at some point something critical to the operation of that plant is going to break. Could be 10 years, could be 10 days. It’s inevitable.
When that happens, the owner of that plant has to make a decision to either:
Shut down to make the necessary repairs and lose billions of dollars a minute.
Pretend like it’s not that big of a deal. Stall. Get a second opinion. Fire/harass anyone who brings it up. Consider selling to make it someone else’s problem. And finally, surprise pikachu face when something bad happens.
In our current society, I don’t have to guess which option the owner is going to choose.
Additionally, we live in a golden age of deregulation and weaponized incompetence. If a disaster did happen, the response isn’t going to be like Chernobyl where they evacuate us and quarantine the site for hundreds of years until its safe to return. It’ll be like the response to the pandemic we all just lived through. Or the response to the water crisis in Flint Michigan. Or the train derailment in East Palestine.
Considering the fallout of previous disasters, I think it’s fair to say that until we solve both of those problems, we should stay far away from nuclear power. We’re just not ready for it.
Hi i was a nuclear mechanic, and that’s not how it works. I’m on the toilet so I’m not gonna explain it now. Arm chair expert, uninformed opinions like this are part of the reason we’re stuck on fossil fuels to begin with.
Everyone brings up Chernobyl like almost 4 entire decades of scientific advancement just didn’t happen.
I was a nuclear plant owner and that’s not how it doesn’t work. I too have a toilet related reason why I won’t contribute meaningfully to this discussion.
The reason we’re stuck on fossil fuels isn’t just because of the people’s opinions. The main reason is the same as for most other major problems: money.
The problem is not science, the problem is not tech, the problem is people, making decisions, like making Fukushima’s sea barriers 3 or 4 meters shorter than worse case scenario because money. Nuclear can be safe. People and money make it unsafe.
Deep level irony that you used a Simpsons meme, which takes place in a city that suffers from a Nuclear Power Plant that doesn’t dispose of nuclear waste properly.
Every form of energy generation is problematic in the hands of capital. Security measures can and are often considered unnecessary expense. And even assuming that they will respect all safety standards, we still have the problem of fuel: France, for example, was only able to supply its plants at a cheap cost because of colonialism in Africa. Therefore, nuclear energy potentially has the same geopolitical problems as oil, in addition to the particular ones: dual technology that can and is applied in the military, not necessarily but mainly atomic bombs.
It’s not completely unfunny because of the unintentional irony. Tough it definitely belongs to that specific category of “meme” commonly seen on r/politicalmemes or any of its variants on the feedverse: usually a frame from The Office with text written on a whiteboard, with the ubiquity of the complete absence of a joke.
Yeah, I’d tend to agree on that. Even beyond the security issues, nuclear has the potential to be a safe, but it also has the potential to be disastrous if mis-managed.
Now imagine a plant in Texas, where power companies response to winter outages has basically been “sucks to be you, winterizing is too costly”.
Or maybe we’d like to go with a long-time trusted company, who totally wouldn’t throw away safety and their reputation for a few extra bucks. Boeing comes to mind.
I like nuclear as a power source, but the absolutely needs to be immutable rules in place to ensure it is properly managed and that anyone attempting to cut corners to save costs gets slapped down immediately. Corporate culture in North America seems to indicate otherwise.
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